Primary conveyor belt cleaner blades are used as an initial scraping tool to remove foreign substances from moving conveyor belts. Unlike secondary conveyor belt scraper blades which are disposed “downstream” of the primary conveyor belt scraper blade, the primary conveyor belt scraper blade is disposed at a very aggressive angle with respect to the conveyor belt so as to remove a maximum amount of foreign material from the conveyor belt.
Typically, prior art primary conveyor belt scraper blades are made from materials which are relatively soft, so as not to damage the expensive conveyor belt. However, such relatively soft primary conveyor belt scraper blades are inefficient in that they do not clean the conveyor belt as well as would be desired.
Efforts to make primary conveyor belt scraper blades with harder materials have been unsuccessful because such harder primary conveyor belt scraper blades have been found to be unduly destructive to the conveyor belt material. Because a moving conveyor belt is not a completely smooth surface, a hardened primary conveyor belt scraper blade tends to scrape away any thickened or outpouched portion of the conveyor belt.
Accordingly, there is a need for a primary conveyor belt scraper blade which avoids the aforementioned problems in the prior art.